Nanaimo city politicians plan to put more money toward short-term solutions for social disorder issues downtown.
Nanaimo council members agreed at a finance and audit committee meeting last week to put another $25,000 towards daytime security patrols and $20,000 for a litter pick-up program. The move could bring the investment in short-term solutions for the downtown area this year to $90,000.
Nanaimo city council agreed in June to a budget for more security in the downtown core, Nob Hill and Old City Quarter and an urban clean-up program to pick up litter and discarded syringes. There would also be short-term responses like needle drop boxes while the city’s public safety committee searched out medium- and long-term solutions to address the different issues.
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The latest funding will ensure security and clean-up measures stay in place until the end of the year.
“The security piece is a short-term solution right now, it’s a stop-gap,” said Brad McRae, city chief operations officer, who considers it a quick, visual deterrent and said businesses seem quite happy with it. “The public safety committee has passed a motion that staff are to provide research in regards to a fulsome plan of re-creating the CPSO [Community Policing Services Office], that includes a lot of things that we just discussed here, between an ambassador program, the RCMP, bylaw enforcement and other community agencies like drug and alcohol and mental health.”
McRae hopes to have a plan in front of the public safety committee for October. The funding still needs to be approved at a formal council meeting.